Blind Joe Death
Encyclopedia
Blind Joe Death is the first album
by American
fingerstyle guitar
ist and composer John Fahey
. There are three different versions of the album, and the original self-released edition of fewer than 100 copies is extremely rare. It was one of the first albums recorded and produced by an independent artist.
The recording of steel string acoustic guitar solos was "incredibly avant-garde" in 1959. It was released on Takoma Records
, Fahey's own creation. It was not marketed and made no impression on the American record-buying public.
Its popularity, significance in guitar music, and critical reception has steadily increased over the years. The 1967 release received five stars in the second edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide.
Music historian Richie Unterberger
characterized the impact of Blind Joe Death, noting it as being "a very interesting record from a historical perspective...as few if any other guitarists were attempting to interpret blues and folk idioms in such an idiosyncratic fashion in the late '50s and early '60s." Richard Cook of the NewStatesman wrote "Only 100 copies were pressed. Incredibly, it was still enough of a milestone to secure him an almost worldwide reputation."
On April 6, 2011, the album was deemed by the Library of Congress
to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" and added to the United States National Recording Registry
for the year 2010.
formed a partnership with record distributor Norman Pierce. Barry Hansen
wrote in 1972, "John Fahey is the original underground musician. Dylan
was still at Hibbing High School when John Fahey made his first record."
Fahey's earliest recordings were released on custom edition 78 rpm discs on his friend Joe Bussard
's record label, Fonotone.
In 1959 Fahey made his own record, recorded in his home town of Takoma Park, Maryland
, and pressed by RCA Custom Recorders. He pressed only 100 copies using money he earned pumping gas at a local station and a loan of $300 from an Episcopal minister. Some of the copies were broken on their way from the plant and others given away to friends. Fahey sent copies to folklorists and scholars around the country, as well as planting them in record stores and Goodwill bins for lucky customers to come across. The remainder were slowly sold over a period of four years.
The material Fahey was playing and composing was unique in 1959. As influential musicologist and friend Dick Spottswood
related, "He was not someone who was going with what we perceived as the mainstream at that time. Don't forget those were the days when rhythm and blues were all of a sudden being marketed to the white audiences called by a new name, rock 'n' roll, and John certainly wasn't interested in doing any of that... he wasn't doing any of those things that people made a living at on that instrument in those days."
The name for the mythical mentor came at a friend's suggestion. In an interview with Stefan Grossman
in the 1980s, Fahey stated "The reason it said "blind" is because a lot of the people I learned from were on old 78 RPM records and a lot of them were blind, and their names were Blind Willie Johnson
, Blind Boy Fuller
, Blind Joe Taggart
, on and on, a whole bunch of them were blind. Also I was thinking, when ever you print the word 'Death' people look at it and I was thinking of record sales already even though I was only going to have a hundred copies pressed." Years later Fahey related, "The whole point was to use the word 'death'." Blind Joe Death was my death instinct. He was also all the Negroes in the slums who were suffering. He was the incarnation, not only of my death wish, but of all the aggressive instincts in me."
For years Fahey and Takoma continued to treat the imaginary guitarist Blind Joe Death as a real person, including booklets with their LPs containing biographical information about him including the "fact" that he had a guitar made from a baby's coffin and that he had taught Fahey to play. Fahey sometimes incorporated the myth of Blind Joe into his performances, wearing dark glasses and being led by the arm onto the stage.
, where he attended college, Fahey's career as guitarist began to take off. Having recorded a minorly successful second album, Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes
in late 1963, Fahey decided to re-release his original efforts. However, he decided to rerecord much of the material, as he felt he had become a much better player. This second pressing claims that "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues", "In Christ There Is No East or West", "The Transcendental Waterfall", "Desperate Man Blues", and "Uncloudy Day" are 1964 rerecordings and the rest ("St. Louis Blues", "Poor Boy Long Ways from Home", "John Henry", "Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues", and "Sligo River Blues") are the original 1959 versions. "Uncloudy Day" was actually the same recording, as was "St. Louis Blues" in an edited version. The 1959 album contained a version of Blind Blake's "West Coast Blues", which (despite being rerecorded in 1964) was not included on the album. To fill the gap, the new version of "Transcendental Waterfall" was extended to over 10 minutes long, a glimpse of things to come.
By 1967 Fahey had released a number of albums and was very successful. It was decided that his first two albums be released in stereo
; they were both rerecorded, resulting in a third version of Blind Joe Death, with a new, shorter version of "The Transcendental Waterfall" and a new song, "I'm Gonna Do All I Can for My Lord". The 1967 version received five stars in the second edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. It should be noted that the 1967 versions of Blind Joe Death and Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes were actually recorded in mono, and briefly released on mono LP. Later in 1967, these recordings were edited to create a stereo effect and released on stereo LP with new artwork.
The 1959 album has only been re-issued on vinyl, under the original catalog # Takoma K80P-4447/4448. The 1996 Fantasy/Takoma CD release, The Legend of Blind Joe Death, contains the 1964 and 1967 versions of the album, with a previously unreleased 1964 recording of "West Coast Blues". Note however that this CD does not include the latest 'shorter' 1967 recording of "The Transcendental Waterfall", as mentioned above.
wrote reissue liner notes for two of Fahey's later albums. In his Allmusic review of the 1964 release of Blind Joe Death Unterberger wrote, "The album's mystique probably owes more to the 1959 record's rarity (and utter oddity in the context of its era) than the music, in which Fahey's experimental blues-folk acoustic fusion is just beginning to take shape. It remains a very interesting record from a historical perspective, however, as few if any other guitarists were attempting to interpret blues and folk idioms in such an idiosyncratic fashion in the late '50s and early '60s."
In its review of the 1997 reissue, Musician
stated, "nobody had more emotional range or profound melodic gift than John Fahey.... Fahey's taste for the weirdly dissonant when dealing with foul emotions and his fascination with tone to the occasional exclusion of almost everything else is on fuller display here."
Q Magazine
gave the reissue 3 Stars, calling Fahey "a superlative acoustic guitar technician capable of blending elements of country, blues and ragtime into a style that in its spare, dark, haunting beauty was uniquely his own."
to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" and added to the United States National Recording Registry
for the year 2010.
In a 2001 interview with VH1
discussing the influence and legacy of Fahey, Barry Hansen
, a long-time friend and collaborator, said of Fahey's early career, "He basically started the whole idea of playing new music on traditional acoustic steel-string guitar. He was the original underground artist." Guitarist Leo Kottke
said of Fahey "John created living, generative culture. With his guitar and his spellbound witness, he synthesized all the strains in American music and found a new happiness for all of us. With John, we have a voice only he could have given us; without him, no one will sound the same."
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
fingerstyle guitar
Fingerstyle guitar
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking ....
ist and composer John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
. There are three different versions of the album, and the original self-released edition of fewer than 100 copies is extremely rare. It was one of the first albums recorded and produced by an independent artist.
The recording of steel string acoustic guitar solos was "incredibly avant-garde" in 1959. It was released on Takoma Records
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
, Fahey's own creation. It was not marketed and made no impression on the American record-buying public.
Its popularity, significance in guitar music, and critical reception has steadily increased over the years. The 1967 release received five stars in the second edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide.
Music historian Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.-Life and writing:Having worked as a DJ at WXPN in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op magazine in 1983...
characterized the impact of Blind Joe Death, noting it as being "a very interesting record from a historical perspective...as few if any other guitarists were attempting to interpret blues and folk idioms in such an idiosyncratic fashion in the late '50s and early '60s." Richard Cook of the NewStatesman wrote "Only 100 copies were pressed. Incredibly, it was still enough of a milestone to secure him an almost worldwide reputation."
On April 6, 2011, the album was deemed by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" and added to the United States National Recording Registry
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording...
for the year 2010.
History
Initially released in 1959 in a very limited edition, one side of the record was credited to a mythical bluesman named Blind Joe Death, while the other side was credited to Fahey himself. It was one of the first albums recorded and produced by an independent artist. Self-released on Takoma Records, the label didn’t formally exist until 1963 when Fahey and ED DensonED Denson
Eugene "ED" Denson is an American music group manager, producer, record label owner, and - later - lawyer, who has made notable contributions to folk, blues, and early San Francisco rock.-Biography:Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940...
formed a partnership with record distributor Norman Pierce. Barry Hansen
Dr. Demento
Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....
wrote in 1972, "John Fahey is the original underground musician. Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
was still at Hibbing High School when John Fahey made his first record."
Fahey's earliest recordings were released on custom edition 78 rpm discs on his friend Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard is an American collector of 78-rpm records.Based in Frederick, Maryland, Bussard maintains a collection of more than 25,000 records, primarily of American folk, gospel, and blues from the 1920s and 1930s, believed to be the largest in the world.He was the subject of a documentary film,...
's record label, Fonotone.
In 1959 Fahey made his own record, recorded in his home town of Takoma Park, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, and pressed by RCA Custom Recorders. He pressed only 100 copies using money he earned pumping gas at a local station and a loan of $300 from an Episcopal minister. Some of the copies were broken on their way from the plant and others given away to friends. Fahey sent copies to folklorists and scholars around the country, as well as planting them in record stores and Goodwill bins for lucky customers to come across. The remainder were slowly sold over a period of four years.
The material Fahey was playing and composing was unique in 1959. As influential musicologist and friend Dick Spottswood
Richard K. Spottswood
Richard K. "Dick" Spottswood is a musicologist and author from Maryland who has catalogued and been responsible for the reissue of many thousands of recordings of vernacular music in the United States. He earned his B.A. from the University of Maryland in 1960, and his Master's degree in Library...
related, "He was not someone who was going with what we perceived as the mainstream at that time. Don't forget those were the days when rhythm and blues were all of a sudden being marketed to the white audiences called by a new name, rock 'n' roll, and John certainly wasn't interested in doing any of that... he wasn't doing any of those things that people made a living at on that instrument in those days."
The name for the mythical mentor came at a friend's suggestion. In an interview with Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
in the 1980s, Fahey stated "The reason it said "blind" is because a lot of the people I learned from were on old 78 RPM records and a lot of them were blind, and their names were Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson
"Blind" Willie Johnson was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals....
, Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
, Blind Joe Taggart
Blind Joe Taggart
Blind Joe Taggart was an American blind country blues musician, from the 1920s and 1930s. He was a great influence on folk singer, Josh White, whom he traveled with. According to White, Taggart was a mean-tempered man. He recorded a few duets with Emma Taggart, whom is believed to have been his wife...
, on and on, a whole bunch of them were blind. Also I was thinking, when ever you print the word 'Death' people look at it and I was thinking of record sales already even though I was only going to have a hundred copies pressed." Years later Fahey related, "The whole point was to use the word 'death'." Blind Joe Death was my death instinct. He was also all the Negroes in the slums who were suffering. He was the incarnation, not only of my death wish, but of all the aggressive instincts in me."
For years Fahey and Takoma continued to treat the imaginary guitarist Blind Joe Death as a real person, including booklets with their LPs containing biographical information about him including the "fact" that he had a guitar made from a baby's coffin and that he had taught Fahey to play. Fahey sometimes incorporated the myth of Blind Joe into his performances, wearing dark glasses and being led by the arm onto the stage.
Reissues
There are three different versions of Blind Joe Death. After moving to Berkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, where he attended college, Fahey's career as guitarist began to take off. Having recorded a minorly successful second album, Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes
Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes
In reviewing the 1967 reissue of Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes, music critic Richie Unterberger writes the material "...is still outstanding..." and comparing to the original release "The fidelity is clearer." Of the 1999 reissue, Unterberger claims it "...does Fahey fans a massive...
in late 1963, Fahey decided to re-release his original efforts. However, he decided to rerecord much of the material, as he felt he had become a much better player. This second pressing claims that "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues", "In Christ There Is No East or West", "The Transcendental Waterfall", "Desperate Man Blues", and "Uncloudy Day" are 1964 rerecordings and the rest ("St. Louis Blues", "Poor Boy Long Ways from Home", "John Henry", "Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues", and "Sligo River Blues") are the original 1959 versions. "Uncloudy Day" was actually the same recording, as was "St. Louis Blues" in an edited version. The 1959 album contained a version of Blind Blake's "West Coast Blues", which (despite being rerecorded in 1964) was not included on the album. To fill the gap, the new version of "Transcendental Waterfall" was extended to over 10 minutes long, a glimpse of things to come.
By 1967 Fahey had released a number of albums and was very successful. It was decided that his first two albums be released in stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...
; they were both rerecorded, resulting in a third version of Blind Joe Death, with a new, shorter version of "The Transcendental Waterfall" and a new song, "I'm Gonna Do All I Can for My Lord". The 1967 version received five stars in the second edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. It should be noted that the 1967 versions of Blind Joe Death and Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes were actually recorded in mono, and briefly released on mono LP. Later in 1967, these recordings were edited to create a stereo effect and released on stereo LP with new artwork.
The 1959 album has only been re-issued on vinyl, under the original catalog # Takoma K80P-4447/4448. The 1996 Fantasy/Takoma CD release, The Legend of Blind Joe Death, contains the 1964 and 1967 versions of the album, with a previously unreleased 1964 recording of "West Coast Blues". Note however that this CD does not include the latest 'shorter' 1967 recording of "The Transcendental Waterfall", as mentioned above.
Reception
Music critic Richie UnterbergerRichie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.-Life and writing:Having worked as a DJ at WXPN in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op magazine in 1983...
wrote reissue liner notes for two of Fahey's later albums. In his Allmusic review of the 1964 release of Blind Joe Death Unterberger wrote, "The album's mystique probably owes more to the 1959 record's rarity (and utter oddity in the context of its era) than the music, in which Fahey's experimental blues-folk acoustic fusion is just beginning to take shape. It remains a very interesting record from a historical perspective, however, as few if any other guitarists were attempting to interpret blues and folk idioms in such an idiosyncratic fashion in the late '50s and early '60s."
In its review of the 1997 reissue, Musician
Musician (magazine)
Musician was a monthly magazine that covered news and information about American popular music. Initially called "Music America", it was founded in 1976 by Sam Holdsworth and Gordon Baird. The two friends borrowed $20,000 from relatives and started the publication in a barn in Colorado...
stated, "nobody had more emotional range or profound melodic gift than John Fahey.... Fahey's taste for the weirdly dissonant when dealing with foul emotions and his fascination with tone to the occasional exclusion of almost everything else is on fuller display here."
Q Magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
gave the reissue 3 Stars, calling Fahey "a superlative acoustic guitar technician capable of blending elements of country, blues and ragtime into a style that in its spare, dark, haunting beauty was uniquely his own."
Legacy
On April 6, 2011, the album was deemed by the Library of CongressLibrary of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" and added to the United States National Recording Registry
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording...
for the year 2010.
In a 2001 interview with VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
discussing the influence and legacy of Fahey, Barry Hansen
Dr. Demento
Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....
, a long-time friend and collaborator, said of Fahey's early career, "He basically started the whole idea of playing new music on traditional acoustic steel-string guitar. He was the original underground artist." Guitarist Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is widely known for his innovative fingerpicking style, which draws on influences from blues, jazz, and folk music, and his syncopated, polyphonic melodies...
said of Fahey "John created living, generative culture. With his guitar and his spellbound witness, he synthesized all the strains in American music and found a new happiness for all of us. With John, we have a voice only he could have given us; without him, no one will sound the same."
Side one
- "West Coast Blues" (Blind BlakeBlind Blake"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
) - "St. Louis Blues" (W. C. HandyW. C. HandyWilliam Christopher Handy was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the "Father of the Blues"....
) - "I'm a Poor Boy a Long Ways from HomePoor Boy Blues"Poor Boy Blues" or "Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home" is a traditional blues song of unknown origin. As with most traditional blues songs, there is great variation in the melody and lyrical content as performed by different artists...
" (Barbecue BobBarbecue BobRobert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob was an early American Piedmont blues musician. His nickname came from the fact that he was a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the two extant photographs of Bob show him playing his guitar while wearing a full length white apron and cook's hat.-Early...
) - "Uncloudy Day" (Josiah Kelley Alwood)
- "John Henry" (Traditional)
- "In Christ There Is no East or West" (Episcopal Church Hymn)
Side two
- "The Transcendental Waterfall" (Fahey)
- "Desperate Man BluesJohn Hardy (song)"John Hardy" is a traditional American folk song based on the life of a railroad worker in West Virginia. The historical John Hardy killed a man during a craps game, was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and was hanged on January 19, 1894....
" (arranged by Fahey) - "Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues" (arranged by Fahey)
- "Sligo River Blues" (Fahey)
- "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues" (Fahey)
Reissue track listing (1996)
- "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues" (Fahey) – 5:07
- "St. Louis Blues" (Handy) – 4:53
- "Poor Boy, Long Ways from Home" (Fahey) – 3:12
- "Uncloudy Day" (Josiah Kelley Alwood) – 3:23
- "John Henry" (Traditional) – 3:20
- "In Christ There Is No East or West" (Harry BurleighHarry BurleighHenry "Harry" Thacker Burleigh , a baritone, was an African American classical composer, arranger, and professional singer...
, John Oxenham) – 2:21 - "Desperate Man Blues" (Fahey) – 4:05
- "Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues" (Fahey) – 3:32
- "Sligo River Blues" (Fahey) – 3:05
- "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues" (Fahey) – 3:56
- "St. Louis Blues" (Handy) – 3:15
- "Poor Boy, Long Ways from Home" (Fahey) – 2:23
- "Uncloudy Day" (Josiah Kelley Alwood) – 2:22
- "John Henry" (Traditional) – 2:05
- "In Christ There Is No East or West" (Blurleigh, Oxenham) – 2:43
- "Desperate Man Blues" (Fahey) – 3:58
- "Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues" (Fahey) – 4:39
- "Sligo River Blues" (Fahey) – 2:33
- "I'm Gonna Do All I Can for My Lord" (Fahey) – 1:24
- "The Transcendental Waterfall" (Fahey) – 10:36
- "West Coast Blues" (Fahey) – 1:25